Cary Clack: Keeping the civil rights dream moving forward

Published 5:05 pm, Monday, June 20, 2011

"He's 89- years-old. He has cancer. He's dying."

Standing in the community meeting room of Wheatley Courts on the city's East Side, Sephira Bailey Shuttlesworth speaks these words matter-of-factly to a gathering of a few dozen people. The education advocate is talking about her husband, the legendary civil rights activist the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

The history of the civil rights movement, especially the Birmingham, Ala., campaign, can't be told without multiple paragraphs about the significance, influence and courage of Shuttlesworth, who survived the dynamiting of his home in 1956 and a mob beating in 1957.

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One of the men who beat Shuttlesworth for attempting to enroll his daughters in an all-white Birmingham school was Bobby Frank Cherry. In May of 2002, I stood outside the Jefferson County Courthouse where, minutes earlier, Cherry was convicted of four counts of murder in the Sept. 15, 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls.

A jubilant Shuttlesworth stood in front of the courthouse and said, "I have never been pessimistic. God said you would reap what you sow. I don't know if this is the next step, but it's a step up to say we are a city where justice can come."

A subtle, if not ignored, marker of the progress that Shuttlesworth help make, is a few feet from where his wife is speaking in the community room. Next to an American flag is a posting that says that the facility abides by federal anti-discrimination laws.

Mrs. Shuttlesworth was the keynote speaker Thursday night at the 14th annual Juneteenth Freedom Dinner. In educating people about the civil rights movement she also wants to preserve the legacy of her husband, who invited Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference - of which the Rev. Shuttlesworth was a founding member - to come to Birmingham in 1963 and challenge that city's desegregation laws.

One photo that's a testament to that legacy was taken in March 2007 in Selma, Ala. during a commemoration of the 42nd anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" when civil rights activists were beaten by Alabama state troopers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

In the photo, Shuttlesworth sits in a wheelchair that was being pushed by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama toward the bridge. As Obama leans over him, Bill Clinton squats in front to greet him, making Shuttlesworth the object of attention of former and future presidents of the United States.

At Wheatley Courts, Mrs. Shuttlesworth was there for the initial meeting of the Living Tree Literary Project. While targeted toward young mothers in Wheatley Courts, this program to promote civic and social responsibility, economic empowerment and accountability is open to all residents. Part of the cultural awareness program will be a book club, and the first book that will be read is The Color of Strength: Embracing the Passion of Our Culture.

The anthology of fiction and nonfiction by African American and, mostly, San Antonio writers includes an essay by Mrs. Shuttlesworth on her husband.

But on Friday, she had a special message to the young mothers in attendance.

"I was a mother at age 14 in rural Tennessee," she said. "A lot of people counted me out. I didn't count me out. My mother didn't count me out. ... I got my bachelor's degree in two years and eight months, and I got my master's degree. I don't accept excuses."

The former teacher and elementary school principal continued, "I come from the original deadbeat dad. I don't want to hear, 'I come from Wheatley.' I don't want to hear, 'I'm poor.' All you have to have is something here (she points to her heart), something in your head."

She may have been speaking to young mothers but she was speaking to anyone when she told them to tell anyone who would deny them their freedom, their dignity and their dreams, "You can't have who I was meant to be."